


Ash and Dust

by Damalia (Achrya)



Series: BeruJean Week 2016 [2]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Alternate Universe - Angels & Demons, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, M/M, Mild Sexual Content, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 18:41:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6251185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Achrya/pseuds/Damalia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A dusty highway, an angel, a demon, and Bertholdt. Reincarnation and forgiveness are strange things.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ash and Dust

**Author's Note:**

> BeruJean Week, Day 2: Supernatural 
> 
> Warnings: This is a weird/sorta angsty/sorta trippy thing. Some…intense imagery. Non graphic sex. A little dub-conlike? Probably also BertholdtMarco and JeanMarco but maybe not? …yep. 

 

Everything is dry and covered in a sheen of dust except himself and Marco. The car is covered in dust that sometimes flickers like starlight when the moon hits it just right, the long empty stretch of highway is nothing but heat cracked pavement and tiny swirling dust storms, even the air is perfectly still, thin and hot and gritty when he breathes in. 

His eyes are wet, blood is sticky on his hands. Marco is in the back, sweating and undulating with pain Bertholdt can’t begin to imagine. The veins on his shoulder, right above where his arm used to be, are bulging and black with demon venom and one of his eyes is shut tight as dark tar like fluid leaks from under the lid. 

Marco doesn’t bleed red, he leaks bright pure white light. He’s coming apart at the seams, cracks showing in his facade, and more grace slips loose with each passing moment. Every so often hell cry out and quake; a bit of his real voice, like chiming bells that make his ears throb, falls from pale lips and there will be a hint of wings, six large golden feathered things, just on the edge of his vision. 

Marco is about to unravel and it’s his fault. He’d taken on too many low level demons, gotten in over his head, and when the fatal blow had come it was Marco who’d fallen into the jaws on the demon while he stared, paralyze and dumb.

It felt like deja vu. 

He only knows one person who can fix this and he knows it’s not what Marco would want but the compulsion to not let this happen, to do whatever it takes to make up for what he’s done, is too strong to ignore. It grips him, shakes his bones, insists that he has so much to make up for. 

The place he picks is the middle of nowhere. It would be any crossroads in any desert in any state, it hardly matters, but as he pulls the weakened angel out of his car and hauls him to the center point it feels like he’s walking along the edge of something, a cliff or wall, and peering into the abyss.

He lays Marco down gently then looks around into the blistering hot and perfectly silent night. 

“Jean?”

Bertholdt never thought of himself as all that important; a child of hunters raised to be a hunter, friends with other hunters…pretty standard for his little isolated community. Nothing unique or special about any of that.

What is different is that he’s always had an angel hanging over one shoulder and a demon on the other. It’s like an actual Tom and Jerry cartoon every day of his life except more violent, with worse language, and occasionally kind of sexy in a way that makes him feel like shit. 

They’ve always been with him, one urging him to do the right thing and protecting him without question (within the rules of Heaven’s Host.) and the other not so much trying to lead him astray but pretty upfront about wanting his soul. 

It’s not just him. Reiner and Annie are the same, perfectly boring and normal hunters who happen to have two near immortal beings fighting over their souls.

Marco and Jean have been with him as long as he can remember. They come and go, having their own other business to attend to, but they always return when called. They get along surprisingly well, sometimes filling the car with their bantering and teasing and other times sitting wordlessly and staring at each other with eyes that know more than Bertholdt can hope to grasp. 

Sometimes he thinks they’re more interested in each other than him and that he’s just a sort of go between or proxy because their touch would burn the other. It would make sense; what interest could an angel and a demon have in him really. 

“Huh.” Jean walks out of the night like he was there all along. He looks human at first glance but at certain angles in certain light there’s an impression of wings that are little more than bones and near translucent skin stretched over them, claws and fangs, curved horns like a ram and delicately pointed ears.

But then the moment fades and he’s just Jean, a guy forever in his late teens like Marco is forever in his early teens. 

“He looks terrible." 

Bertholdt is too far gone to be angry about how disinterested Jean sounds. Besides he can see a flicker of something dark and sad in those pale amber eyes.

"C-can you fix this? Draw the venom out?”

“And save the saintly Marco from unraveling.” Jean cocked his head to the side and smiles with too many teeth. “What do I get?" 

Maybe it’s less about saving Marco and more about just being tired because looking at Jean like this? He’s not scared or angry or anything at all. Just empty and stretched too thin; he feels like he’s been fighting since he was a child, given up everything and lost so much and done such terrible things. 

He feels like it’s been going on much longer than his 25 years. Like it’s been countless lifetimes and it’s just ground him down one bit at a time. 

He can’t even sleep at night without Marco or Jean at his side. 

"You know what you get.”

Another smile and then Jean is crouching in front of them. “Marco is going to be upset.”

He’ll be furious and, worse, he’ll be sad and hurt. He’ll probably cry and Bertholdt dies inside when Marco cries. 

“He’ll be alive.”

Jean blinks slowly then nods. He leans in and presses his lips to Bertholdt’s, fists the front of shirt and hauls him closer with inhuman strength, and he feels like something deep in his gut is being burned, boiled away, into something small and meaningless. 

Jean’s other hand tugs at his belt and he stiffens even though he knows that this is part of it. He isn’t shying away, he’s certainly thought about Jean like this enough times that turning back now would be laughable,  but he also knows what trusting demons gets you. 

“Marco first." 

Jean sighs against his lips then snaps his fingers. Marco shrieks, back bowing up off of the pavement. Black tar starts to drain out of his wounds and bubble up from all the places he’d started to crack. Bertholdt shudders as each scream rips through him, tears at him, but Jean looks unbothered. 

"Personally,” Jean says as he tugs his belt loose. “I would have waited until after so he didn’t have to see this but that’s just me.”

Marco has tar seeping out of his eyes so Bertholdt is skeptical about how much he can actually see but with angels and demons who really knows. 

Jean strips him quickly then pushes him back against the warm pavement, muttering something about a bed and poor timing. His fingers drifted down his spine then twist in and Bertholdt closes his eyes and wishes he could close his ears because Marco is still screaming. 

He thinks that sound will haunt him forever. 

Jean chuckles against his ear. “Don’t worry, he’ll be right back to fighting me for your soul in no time. Maybe not in this cycle but the next and the next. So much forgiveness in him." 

Bertholdt doesn’t know what that’s supposed to mean but he feels like he should. 

\----

When Jean is done with him he doesn’t feel much of anything at all. Not the heat of Jean’s body, the sweat on his own skin, or the warmth of the ground under him. 

At some point Marco had gone silent and, when Jean untangled from him with one last biting kiss, he hears the angel, voice hoarse and weak. 

"You don’t have to keep doing this Jean. You could just-" 

"I can’t." 

He doesn’t need to see the demon go to know he’s gone and he doesn’t need to see Marco to know the soft feathery brush against his back is from him. 

Normally it would feel warm and soothing, would sink into his sore body and chase away the aches and pain, but now there’s nothing at all. 

Marco looks crushed and when he presses a hand (his only hand but he doesn’t seem bothered about it.) to Bertholdt’s side he has to pull it away an instant later, the skin on his finger tips red and blistering.

He stays anyway, hovering almost close enough to touch but not quite, ad he drags himself up to put his clothes back on. He’s covered in dust now too, they both are, and his eyes are dry and itchy, his throat battered because, worst of all, he’d screamed for Jean in the end. 

"I think I can fix this.” Marco says softly when they’re back in the car and driving again. Bertholdt hums back. “He didn’t take your whole soul so if we can break the contract it…it might be okay.”

Is selling your soul fixable? 

He feels like it’s something that lingers forever. For lifetimes. 


End file.
